What newsroom leaders can do now to prepare for disaster coverage

In this month’s edition, CJR Editor Kyle Pope and resident management guru Jill Geisler discuss how to be disaster-ready, race and newsroom culture, and how to give thanks to journalists and employees.

Kyle: What can and should newsrooms be doing to prepare for disaster? We talked recently with the editor of one of the papers in the California fire zone, and it struck me how unprepared newsrooms can be to deal with something like this.

Let me share a five-part framework I use for organizations that want to upgrade their cultures. Focusing on values, skills, tools, systems and assumptions provides a road map for filling in their gaps—whether it’s building a culture of investigative journalism, multiplatform publishing, or breaking news/disaster coverage readiness.

So, let’s walk through each as they apply to journalism in the worst of times:

Values: What values guide us? Getting info first and right? Providing coverage as a public service so long as it is humanly possible? Compassion for victims? Transparency in our methods? Ethical decision-making under pressure?

Skills: What are the basic skills we require of all staffers? Ability to share info on all platforms? To capture images? To serve as a “live” reporter, no matter one’s title or role? To make ethical judgments in the moment about safety, graphic content, causing panic, identifying victims before